Racial Discrimination: It is increasing or is just more visible because of social media?

By Claudia Simone Ene

Discrimination occurs when a person or a group of people are treated differently, mostly in a bad way because of aspects such as: skin colour, gender, age, sexuality, religion, but also politics.

With reference to race, discrimination is the improper treatment of someone because of their colour or ethnicity and it had a huge impact in the history of humanity. The concept of race was created to amplify the differences between people of European and African origins, describing Africans and African Americans heirs as insignificant human beings and justifying the system of exploitation (Britannica).

Racial discrimination was the central of North American slavery, but also the middle of the colonization and empire-building activities of western Europeans, notably in the 18th

century. By the 19th century, racism was spread around the world, causing anger from those

who were colonized and abused. Since the mid-20th century, many conflicts have been

explained using racial discrimination, so for a better awareness, societies have embraced

the idea of promoting human rights in public policies following the Universal Declaration of

Human Rights from 1948 everywhere in the world.

As for the present, the article is focused on the following question regarding the term of

Racial Discrimination: It is increasing or is just more visible now because of social media?

Survey results have shown important changes in racial attitudes in the last 50 years. As an

example, significant results have been noticed regarding the approval for interracial

marriages which has increased from 5 percent in 1950 to 90 percent in 2015, while the

support for integrated schools has increased from 50 percent in 1950s to 95 percent in

2015, according to Krysan and Moberg 2016.

Even though, many people believe that racial discrimination is still present everywhere in the world. More than 30 years of field experimental studies from 10 different countries

showed high level of discrimination against non-whites in labour and product market. In

countries where migration is still occurring often, like United States or United Kingdom,

racial discrimination is still a problem among the population in the workplace, housing and

even health care system.

A Survey of Pew Research Center has concluded that majorities of three-quarters of Blacks, Hispanics and Asians have experienced racial discrimination, or they have been treated unfairly because of their race or ethnicity from time to time. While in the past, racial discrimination was described by judgements, insults, social distancing, but also physical violence, nowadays, the racist language has become more aggressive and mostly because of the online space. The internet offers more than four billion users the chance to interact and express their ideas through multiple platforms using far from a subtle language that defines a face-to-face racial interaction.

Being characterised by anonymity, social media is an accessible context for everyone to

share their ideas and beliefs with aggressivity and hostility and more than this, it creates

opportunities for organising special interest groups across geographic boundaries.

There are many studies exploring the human behaviour in relation with the social media and

racial discrimination and the results explain the same violence regarding this matter.

According to Anderson and Hitlin, in 2016 there were over two million race related posts

every day on Twitter, most of them being related with public events. The online interactions

have increased significantly in the last years and the most common form of racial

discrimination is through texts, but also pictures.

For example, in a survey of 264 high school students, three- fourths of Black students

witnessed discrimination online through messages, pictures, videos or comments (Tynes et

al.2008).

In another case, a study of an online special interest group mentioned that White and Black users were coping very well until the people of colour mentioned their race and they have been excluded from group discussions and activities (West and Thakore, 2013).

As regarding to the non-traditional special interest groups across geographic boundaries,

there have been cases when people have disguised themselves as mainstream websites to

propagate their message to those visiting the website. Therefore, the news websites have

implemented human and robot monitoring of content to decrease the racist comments and

to be aware of the fake websites.

Having all these into consideration, it is hard to confirm that racial discrimination is

increasing, but for sure it is more visible on the social media where people under anonymity

are posting violent messages, trying to treat unfairly those who are other race or ethnicity.

Unfortunately, minds can not be changed by laws, but concepts can be adjusted through

more awareness to what is happening nowadays in Social Media, campaigns led by

governments and NGOs and by personal examples in the society.

Sources:

1. Racism. https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/black-history-milestones

2. Black History Milestones: Timeline. https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/black-history-

milestones

3. Race in America 2019. https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2019/04/09/race-in-america-2019/

4. Unmasking Racism: Students of Color and Expressions of Racism in Online Spaces.

https://academic.oup.com/socpro/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/socpro/spz026/5539501